“I still haven’t found the true friend I was looking for in the end. Mom says it’s very hard to find a true friend or lover. Of course, she wasn’t saying this to me—I just overheard her talking to Grandma on the phone. She said that she, like many people, waited her whole life but never met the ideal friend or lover she imagined when she was young. But when she was young, she didn’t believe it. She had plenty of time and always thought she was special, so she kept waiting, until now, when she’s finally resigned herself to reality and realized she’s not special at all, and that person will never come.

“Mom says most people just muddle through life. Friends come and go in waves; ordinary marriages are full of quarrels, but the cost of divorce is too high to bear.

“That’s why everyone likes watching outrageous movies and TV shows—our lives need others to create ups and downs.”

Zoe Young actually didn’t really understand the meaning behind her mother’s words, but like a small animal, she could sense something from those sentences, so she wrote them down, as a small comfort for the melancholy she forced upon herself in adolescence.

“Alan Carter, I know you’re not an ordinary person. Watching you is like watching a movie.”

This movie about an outstanding young man had a happy ending when Alan Carter was admitted to Peking University, but as for what happened after, the audience member Zoe Young would never know.

Zoe Young felt as if she was about to sink into such a beautiful spring afternoon, like a frog soaking in warm water. She began to accept imperfect friendships, began to be content with always being second place, began to be satisfied with this calm and leisurely student life, and felt very content.

Everything was good. Not the best, but still good.

This feeling of peaceful satisfaction ended the moment Zoe Young saw Sean Sherman.

For the grade-wide math test, Zoe Young, the class monitor, and the math class representative went to the math office to help tally scores and distribute test papers. One person was responsible for flipping through the mixed-bound test papers and reading out the scores clearly marked in red pen, while the other two each held a calculator, quickly adding up the scores and reporting the total, and the person reading the scores would write the total at the top of the test paper.

Zoe Young was mechanically reading out the scores, when suddenly, upon turning to a certain page, her heart started racing—the handwriting was her own.

She took a deep breath, waiting for the other two to report the total score.

Full score: points, she got points. Zoe Young’s lips curled up a little, and when the other two congratulated her, she smiled shyly, then quickly waved her hand and said, “Let’s keep working, keep working.”

After that, when she read out the scores, her voice became much brighter and happier.

Besides the three of them, there were seven or eight other students from other classes doing the same work. After all the test papers from all the exam rooms were tallied, under the teacher’s direction, they used scissors to cut open the seals and plastic strings, designated areas for each class in front of two rows of tables, and began carrying the test papers to their respective areas.

Zoe Young happily weaved between the tables, gently placing each test paper on different tables. Whenever she saw a paper with a score above points, she would smile and think to herself, “Hmm, that’s a really good score.”

“Really good” meant it was good, but not as good as her own.

Then, as she lowered her head, she saw a test paper in her hand with a bright red points.

Zoe Young froze for a moment, instinctively turning her head to check the vertical class number and name. Class 2, Sean Sherman.

She stood there for a while, her face slightly flushed. She wanted to grab the girl next to her and ask how to pronounce the second character, but didn’t dare show her the test paper—or rather, she didn’t want anyone to know how much she cared about that points.

So she quickly walked to Class 2’s table, put the test paper down, paused, looked around, then quietly picked it up again and slipped it into the middle of the stack, not wanting to see it lying so conspicuously on top.

Zoe Young didn’t feel jealous. She just felt ashamed of her earlier, premature pride. Even though she hadn’t shown her happiness in front of her classmates, facing herself was the most embarrassing.

When all the test papers were finally distributed, she pretended not to care and turned to the math class representative, saying, “Hey, that character with two ‘mountain’ radicals together, how do you pronounce it…”

The math class representative shook her head blankly. “Why are you asking?”

Zoe Young shook her head in a fluster. “It’s nothing,” she said, then, trying to cover up, added, “I just suddenly remembered, three ‘water’ radicals together is pronounced ‘miǎo’, three ‘stone’ radicals together is ‘lěi’, and then…”

She had just said this when suddenly the math teacher from Class 2 shouted so loudly that everyone in the office jumped.

“Sean Sherman, you really don’t give us teachers who write the test any face, do you? Another points?”

Zoe Young saw Monica Zack’s face suddenly darken. She pursed her lips, half-smiling as she looked at the Class 2 math teacher, then turned to pick up the thermos and pour water into her mug.

shēn, one sound. Sean Sherman, this name sounded a bit like “auntie” (shěnshen).

The called Sean Sherman was actually in the office. Zoe Young saw her tidying up her class’s test papers, stacking them neatly on the desk. When she heard the teacher’s exaggerated praise, she just tucked a stray hair behind her ear, gave a perfunctory smile, and continued to organize the already very neat stack of papers.

“Oh, it’s her. I’ve heard about her for ages—she’s really arrogant, always says she won’t go anywhere but Zhenhua.” The math class representative finally caught on, glancing at Sean Sherman and pursing her lips.

She was a very ordinary girl, with high cheekbones, a forehead covered in acne, a ponytail just like Zoe Young’s, and silver-framed glasses. Standing there, she seemed to blend into the pale green wall.

But there was a kind of sharpness about her, and Zoe Young was sure only she could sense it—maybe because she was the most sensitive and self-conscious person there.

“Alan Carter, you know, that look on her face—no, actually, she had no expression at all. But standing there, it was as if she exuded an aura, telling me that being second in the grade was nothing special, that points was laughable, because the smile of Sean Sherman, who got points and ranked first in the grade, only meant one thing: she looked down on No. 13 Middle School, and also looked down on being first in the grade here.”

Zoe Young didn’t know if she was overthinking it.

But at that moment, she had already started thinking about the question of being a “chicken’s head” or a “phoenix’s tail.” Was the last place student at the High School Affiliated to Normal University better than the top student at No. 13 Middle School? Of course, that was a foolish and extreme thought, but she couldn’t help thinking it.

She couldn’t come up with an answer. The pride and leisure of the “chicken’s head” always carried a sense of dissatisfaction from a limited perspective, while the humble “phoenix’s tail” clung to the group for identity—wasn’t that even sadder? Many people spend their whole lives wavering between these choices, unable to risk everything to become the “phoenix’s head,” and unable to be content as the “chicken’s head.”

But for Zoe Young at this age, the result of her thinking didn’t matter; what mattered was the act of thinking itself. Sean Sherman was like an ice pick that pierced through Zoe Young’s calm and warm life, making her feel ashamed of her own comfort and satisfaction.

Zoe Young suddenly remembered she once told Alan Carter that she would definitely get into Zhenhua.

When we say “definitely,” do we really understand the true meaning behind those words?

Sean Sherman sat at her desk memorizing English words every day after class, and her English skills were already far beyond the first-year middle school level. English and Chinese were subjects best studied in fragmented time, like the ten minutes between classes, or even while sitting on the toilet (though classmates joked that this kind of obsessive behavior would cause constipation), because their knowledge systems were also fragmented—each word is independent, each poem doesn’t require continuous thought. Other “whole block” times, like self-study periods, were better for studying math, which required long, uninterrupted concentration…

Of course, all this was information Zoe Young had gathered from bits of eavesdropping and casual questions. Her main source was Benny, or rather, Charles Morgan, who was in Class 2 with Sean Sherman.

Zoe Young still couldn’t get used to Benny’s full name. Whenever she said those four characters out loud, she couldn’t help but laugh.

Only in front of Benny could Zoe Young show her interest in and fondness for Sean Sherman without any disguise.